


Belief

by ssa_archivist



Category: Smallville
Genre: M/M, hurt-comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-05-19
Updated: 2002-05-19
Packaged: 2017-11-01 10:15:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/355474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssa_archivist/pseuds/ssa_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lies taste like scotch and copper and river water.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Belief

## Belief

by Brighid

<http://www.debchan.com/livia/brighid/br-smallville.htm>

* * *

Disclaimer: Not mine. Not getting paid. Just noodling, really. 

For Te -- a prezzie. 

Belief  
by Brighid 

Clark rubbed his eyes, not because they were _truly_ tired, but because he _felt_ that they should be. 11 p.m. on a Friday and he was cramming for finals, doing four years in three because that's how long the money would last and he'd be damned if he let his parents bankrupt the farm for him. The scholarships helped, but they only covered so much, not any of those little extras of food, shelter and survival. 

He sighed, stretched. Listened to the noise in the common room, the sound of several people having sex in the building. Breathed deep and found the smell of pot and beer and sorority girl perfume. And here he was, _geeky_ Clark, studying alone in his room. Which was fine, because that was the image he was trying to cultivate, that's what he was _going_ for. 

Even if that, too, made him feel a little tired. 

He knew, in his heart, that this was not the lesson Jonathan and Martha Kent had intended for him, that they had not meant to stifle him with their fears and their cautions. Their fears were real. Clark understood that. He understood that to be truly safe he had to keep his walls up. More importantly, he needed those walls to keep them safe. He was approaching nigh invulnerable, to borrow a term. But his mother, his father ... they were no such thing, all too frail and human. Their frailty terrified him, even as he longed for just a little of it himself. 

He raised his head in surprise at a sudden pounding on his door. Not a common thing, really, again by necessity masked as choice. Distance was his friend, after all. He got up, propping his text open, and opened the battered metal door to find Lindsay standing there, his face a little strangled, telling him to get his ass into the common room, that there was something he had to see on the news. 

At first Clark thought " _Mom_ and _Dad_ ," but no, it was from downtown Metropolis, Metropolis Mercy to be precise, and it was Lex in black and lavender. There were reporters everywhere, sound and fury Lex's face pale was perfectly composed, utterly bland. Maybe just a little bruised around the eyes, a little abstracted as he stared off into the middle distance, but not something most people would notice. Clark, though, he knew that look, remembered it and felt the memory of it twist inside of him, a serpent in his belly. It made the blood rush in his ears, so loudly that for the first few moments he couldn't hear anything at all, just saw Lex's thin, scarred mouth twist around words, but gradually it began to penetrate. 

Dead. Lionel Luthor was dead. 

And Lex ... Lex was _alone_. He saw it in the careful, measured stillness of his body, the precise enunciation of his words. Must not spook the shareholders, a clean, smooth transition of leadership, a man of twenty-six more than ready to assume the mantle of power he'd been groomed for all his life. 

But Clark, he could see straight down the bone, could remember the flavour of lies from Lex's mouth, and he knew that beneath the ice there was fire and fury and fear. He could see them in the micro-expressions, the minutest tics and pauses of Lex's face. 

"Lucky bastard," some guy muttered across the room, seeing only money and privilege and not knowing anything at all. Clark curled his fingers, wanting to hurt, to _hurt_ badly, to push into soft flesh and yielding bone and make the damned fool _see_ what he saw, but it wouldn't do any good at all. 

And knew, too, that it would be hypocritical, because he himself hadn't seen it. Hadn't seen it until it was too late to do anything about it. 

He closed his eyes, swallowed, felt Lindsay's hand on his arm. "He's a friend of yours, isn't he?" and Lindsay, he was a good guy, saw things for himself. Seemed to understand things Clark himself only halfway understood. 

"Was," Clark replied, not opening his eyes. 

"Is," Lindsay said back, soft voice firm and just a little ... chiding. Like Clark's mother's, when she was being adult and reasonable and letting him have just enough rope to hang himself. 

"Is," Clark agreed at last, opening his eyes. 

"Need a ride?" Lindsay offered, but Clark shook his head, muttered something about the bus. 

Three minutes later he was flying. 

)0( 

Lex was very, very drunk when Clark landed softly on the penthouse balcony. He was barefoot and his shirt was askew and he held a bottle tight in one hand, a glass in the other. He hadn't been crying, but Clark knew him well enough to know Lex never _cried_ ; he just bled a little to death inside. 

Usually it had been Lionel who cut him. 

Once it had been Clark. 

"Come to watch me celebrate?" Lex said, and his voice was smooth and burnished and still overly precise. 

"You're not celebrating," Clark replied. "You're hurting." 

"Whatever you want to believe, Clark," Lex tipped the bottle up, looked a little regretful as the last few drops of amber dribbled into the glass. He swallowed it in one gulp, shuddered slightly, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Some other time I might debate it with you, but at the moment I'm drunk off my ass and besides ...we don't talk anymore, do we?" 

"Not for a while," Clark said, feeling a hot flush of shame. Twenty-one and he still blushed. 

"Not for a while," Lex repeated, something almost like a smile curving his mouth, "because really, what was there left to say?" He sat down, suddenly, only missing the ground because Clark was there, sliding a chair under him, guiding him to safety. "I didn't kill him, you know," Lex said suddenly, a little uncertainly. 

"I know," Clark said, reaching out and touching the soft, oddly vulnerable angle behind Lex's jaw. "You loved him too much." 

"I hated the bastard," Lex denied, but it came out slow and ponderous, without any real venom at all. Just ... sorrow, a touch of confusion, and that had to be a galling admission. "Twenty-six years of his mind games, his fucking alpha-dog routine, and he gets taken out by a strep virus he picked up from some shareholder's kid. There's some sort of cosmic irony in there, I'm sure. I might even try to figure it out when I'm sober." He licked his lips thoughtfully. "I hated him so goddamn much, you've no idea." 

Lex was very, very drunk. 

"Probably not," Clark agreed. "I'm sorry." And then he leaned down, tilted Lex's head back, kissed him hard enough that teeth clacked, that Lex's lips tore, just a little, at the corners. For a heartbeat, maybe two, Lex leaned into it, hot mouthed and hungry. Then he pulled away, and Clark was left only with the echo of scotch and copper. 

"I don't do pity fucks," Lex said sharply, standing unsteadily, moving away as though trying to find enough distance. As though there could be enough distance. 

"I don't give them," Clark replied, dropping into the still-warm seat. 

Lex watched him, face half-shadowed, eyes overly bright, and the silence stretched out between them. Clark, though, had learned stillness in the intervening years. He waited in silence. 

"Why the _fuck_ are you here?" Little more than a whisper, but it lashed something still raw and vulnerable inside that Clark had never been completely able to wall off. "Why now? It's been three goddamned years and we've been good as dead to one another, so why the fucking resurrection now?" 

"Because ... you were alone. Because ... I understand alone." He kept his voice soft, low because ... because ... he was ashamed. Guilty. Lex's grief was at least partially his burden to bear. Even if he'd only been just eighteen. He'd known. Had known from their first kiss, on a riverbank. 

He just hadn't been strong enough to believe what he knew. And so ... he ran. Ran as fast as only he could run. Away from Smallville and LuthorCorp but never completely away from Lex. No matter how much he had wanted to believe he could, had convinced himself that he had. 

Clark Kent, Jonathan and Martha's son, was such a fucking _liar_. And his lies ... tasted like scotch and copper and river water. 

"I've always been alone, Clark. For a short time, I thought maybe I wasn't ... but I was more alone than ever, wasn't I?" Lex had a gift for words that wounded. He knew exactly how to use the truth, even better than how he used lies. 

Clark stood, crossed the shadows and small patches of city-bright, took Lex by the shoulders. Held him with deceptive gentleness. "I was eighteen, and scared. And alone. I was used to being _alone_ and I didn't really believe it could be different." 

Lex's eyes were dark, sheened. "You didn't believe in me," he said, but it wasn't just Clark he was talking to. 

"I didn't know how to," Clark repeated. "But I loved you. Still do. Always will." He let his left hand slide up, curve around to the base of Lex's skull, tracing every notch and hollow from memory. Mouthed Lex's temple with open, wet kisses even as his hand slid down Lex's spine, delicate over the fragile curves of bone. Lex shivered, leaned up into him. 

"Don't make promises you can't keep," and then Lex was kissing him, hard, angry, vicious, and Clark found that he could take it, found that he could stand there and not run from the grief and rage that buffeted Lex. He thought, just maybe, that he could even keep Lex safe from himself. Lex's hands and mouth were everywhere, tearing cloth, biting, sucking, clawing, voracious. They were the first things he'd truly felt in three years. 

Clark's hands, in contrast, were as gentle as he could make them, and they shook only a little against the flare of Lex's ribcage, the elegant hollows over his hips. Trembled only slightly as they found the hot insistence of his erection. Memory entwined with moment and Clark wrapped his hand around Lex, knowing its necessity, its rightness. One hand held Lex steady even as the other unlocked him, made him seize and gasp and spill. 

They stood perfectly still, and then Lex's trembling turned to shudders. 

Eyes still closed, he turned blindly to nuzzle Lex's face, to lick away the tears. Lex's mouth was gentle now, tentative. Afraid. Clark opened his eyes, kissed away the questions in Lex's gaze, and then lifted him, carrying him through the balcony doors, through the apartment and into the bedroom. A brief, silent flurry of motion and they were naked and curled up tightly between plum-coloured sheets. 

"I don't want to be alone," Lex said later, much later, half-asleep and utterly unguarded. 

Clark kissed the back of his neck, settled in as close as physics would allow and said, "You won't be." 

Believed it was the truth, and that belief might just be enough. 

)0( 

B 


End file.
